Technical Field
The invention relates to automated business systems. More particularly, the invention relates to a user friendly business rules management system.
Description of the Background Art
A business rules engine is a software system that executes one or more business rules in a runtime production environment. Business rule engines typically support rules, facts, priority (score), mutual exclusion, preconditions, and other functions. Business rule engine software is commonly provided as a component of a business rule management system which, among other functions, provides the ability to create, read, modify, and delete the rules, verify consistency of rules definitions, and define the relationships between different rules.
Most existing business rule frameworks rely on sets of conditional expressions that require Boolean operators, such as AND, OR, and NOT, which are difficult for business users to write and understand, especially when there are more than a few expressions.
Further, in existing systems, when multiple rules are used, they must be ordered. A common approach is to evaluate the rules in order, with later rules overriding earlier ones. A new rule cannot be simply added to the start or the end of the list. Instead, it must be added so that its order is after the rules that it should override, but before the rules that it should be overridden by.
Furthermore, a system or user who wants to compute a desired output variable cannot simply scan the rules from the start until one is found whose conditions match the current state of the inputs. Instead, all the later rules must also be considered in case one overrides a preceding rule. As a result, the process of creating and evaluating rules is time consuming and confusing.
Therefore, present systems make the tasks of making and updating business rules difficult and time consuming. This complexity often prevents non-technical users from understanding and managing the business rules in their organization.